57 
NOTICES OF INSECTS HURTFUL IN GARDENS. 
fruit is gathered, to prevent the mother-insects from choosing the plants 
so washed as a place for nidification, for, if this could be accomplished, 
there would be no early appearance of the young broods in spring. 
Soap-suds and tobacco-water we consider as good as any other wash 
invented to keep off the aphides, more especially if the ground under 
the trees be now and then dusted with soot, which is always offensive 
to insects seeking the sweets of either foliage, flowers, or fruit. 
Such nauseous applications can only be used before the flowers or 
fruit appear, as the scent of the one, and the flavour of the other, would 
certainly be deteriorated by any portion of these ingredients remaining 
upon them. Fumigation may be employed to within a fortnight or 
three weeks before the fruit is ripe, as the taint of this on the trees is 
much sooner dispersed. Cherries on walls are often sadly disfigured by 
the aphides; their excrement, called honey-dew , falls on the fruit, 
and, being of a clammy consistence, every particle of dust sticks to the 
smooth skin of the fruit, rendering them unfit for the use of the table, 
unless they be thoroughly washed in water. Such trees should be well 
fumigated as soon as the fruit are as large as marrow peas; and should 
the aphides appear after this on the points of the shoots, they should 
be immediately trimmed off. 
A fumigating cloth made of light canvass, and large enough to cover 
a wall-tree, an espalier, or a low standard, is a most useful appendage 
in a garden; indeed it is impossible to keep wall-trees free from these 
insects without fumigating bellows, cloth, and a powerful garden water- 
engine. 
There are many different species of aphides, and of different colours, 
which, it would appear, is owing to the quality of their food. On the 
rose and many other plants they are green; hence the common name of 
green fly; on the elder and common garden bean they are black; on 
some geraniums they are red; and on crack-willow they are grey, and 
of a very large size, which is a very distinct species. A mealy sort 
attack cabbages and turnips in dry summers, and the common green 
species sometimes fall on the common field-pea in such numbers as posi¬ 
tively to destroy completely the crop, leaving the surface of the ground 
white with their sloughs, and where there are also myriads of the little 
two and seven-spotted lady-birds devouring the aphides which remain on 
the ground after the podless straw is raked off. On one particular 
occasion, we could not but observe, at the same time, the vast concourse 
of summer-birds which congregated in the field to assist in the destruc¬ 
tion of the aphides ; —black-caps, garden-warblers, white-throats, lesser 
white-throats, three sorts of willow-wren, &c. &c., all attended by their 
young, had here a sweet and rich feast. 
VOL. V.-— NO. LVI. I » 
